Next Door to Murder

A Rona Parish Mystery - Journalist Rona Parish continues her popular series on local family businesses with a piece on the Willow furniture emporium. For once, there dont seem to be any skeletons in the Willow family cupboards. But when Louisa, the daughter of Ronas reserved elderly neighbours, comes to Rona with a plea for help, it seems there may be a dark secret closer to home, and all Ronas journalistic instincts are aroused . . .From Publishers WeeklyIn Fraser's leisurely sixth Rona Parrish cozy (after 2007's Rogue in Porcelain), the freelance journalist and her artist husband, Max Allerdyce, are used to knowing little about the tenants who come and go at the four-story Georgian house next door to their own in Marsborough. But when a reserved couple, Barbara and Keith Franks, and their adult daughter, Louise, become their new neighbors, Rona is intrigued to learn from Louise that she has no memory of her prior life in Canada due to an accident. Rona soon discovers that helping Louise reclaim her past is more exciting—and perilous—than her current assignment, writing about a family-owned furniture store for Chiltern Life magazine. Fraser's cozy goes down with a mild kick, like tea laced with a dash of brandy. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistFreelance journalist and biographer Rona Parish just can’t stay out of dangerous situations. Her last outing resulted in her witnessing a traumatic murder while she researched the owners of a ceramics firm. She’s barely recovered from the ordeal when her editor suggests a “nice, safe” assignment—profiling a local furniture merchant. But it’s not her research on the furniture firm that causes trouble. It’s Rona’s new next-door neighbors, an elderly couple with a thirtysomething daughter who suffers from a crippling case of amnesia. When Rona befriends the young woman and tries to help her, she has no idea that she will uncover a terrible secret. Set in a British village where everyone knows everyone else, the Rona Parish series perfectly captures everyday life in the small towns of the UK and portrays the sorts of problems and issues that are faced by modern families and career women everywhere. Yet it’s not just chick lit; there’s enough suspense and mayhem to appeal to all but the hardest-boiled mystery fans. --Emily Melton